Auld age, Chapter 561

 I'm waiting for a physiotherapy appointment through the NHS, and the doctor encouraged me to get straight on to Benenden, and tell them I'd have months to wait.  Benenden set up a chat with a physiotherapist by telephone last week, and she has given me a self-managed regime and a long elastic band.  A few days in, I think I'm getting some benefit - but it could just be oenotherapy-induced euphoria.  Anyway, as I thought, the diagnosis is one of 'early degenerative change', and the advice is to carry on with the physio, using over-the-counter analgesics and/or anti-inflams as required.  Next, a ride through the MRI tunnel, to which I look forward not one bit.  But I'm grateful to have only such minor annoyances.  And being the age I am, I even get a free flu jab next week.

Some wonderful bright days in amongst the autumnal gloom.  A neighbouring street is lined with beautiful autumn colour, and our back garden is rapidly filling up with leaves from next door's poxy oak tree.  The front garden is full of silver birch leaves from across the road, and I dare say we're inflicting our cherry and willow leaves on Gwen and Malcolm. 

Seduced by a too-good-to-be-true offer from one of the seedsmen, I sent for three dozen pot luck plug-plant perennials.  They came back with a gravely boring selection, but I've potted them up to over-winter and grow on in the sitooterie.  Be warned: I may be looking for homes for yarrows, verveins, foxgloves and worse come the spring.

Favourite places

Yesterday, Martyn's birthday having been largely cloudy, today's clear skies seemed a good enough reason for a day out.  Liking the seaside as we do, we headed for the Birling Gap, a striking beauty spot to which Martyn introduced me soon after we met.  That was a while ago, in times when I could happily scamper up to the lighthouse.  Lots of people there - on a Tuesday in October - many of them speaking German or Oriental languages. 

From there, we headed up to Beachy Head, only to discover that the pub where we'd planned to eat was locked up.  Whether temp or perm we didn't find out, so after a little walk along the 'Peace Path', we hopped (or in one case eased painfully) back into the car and headed down to Eastbourne for fish and chips at the local branch of Harry Ramsden's.  I'm not keen on using chain restaurants, but this one tends to be good, and today's experience was just fine.  Fish in very crisp batter, chips, mushy peas, tartare sauce (I prefer my home-made version) and fried onion rings.  And a pot of Yorkshire tea (doubtless from the shimmering tea gardens of Harrogate...).  Pleasant outlook, clean tables, friendly service, good food, moderate bill.  We don't need a whole lot more than that, really.

One step forward, two limps back

A somewhat medic-intensive week.  I'd a day of meeting variously drink- and drug-damaged people on Monday (numerous stories on application, but of course I'm not free to blog them).

Tuesday started a 24-hour  burst of NHS-bothering by your obedient servant.  I went along to an unfamiliar medical practice in the town for my over-65 screening of the state of my abdominal aorta.  While I was waiting to go in, I chatted to a mother of 11-month identical girl twins, one of whom had helpfully developed a little birthmark on her forehead when she was a few weeks old.  Notwithstanding that, the mother told me she thought they looked quite different.  I retaliated by telling her that Martyn and I wished we had a quid for every time we were asked if we were twins.

After they went in, I chatted with a young man who was in for blood tests, having been bitten on the back in a Disgustedville nightclub where he'd gone for a night out with his girlfriend: he gleefully hoiked up his sweater to show me the nasty mark on his back.  Wonder if I'll get to see the perp and his mate, the latter having held my young friend in a headlock the while.  Anyone else share the image of TW as a place where you're likely to be gratuitously attacked by some thug while going quietly about your business?  No?  Then time to review your assumptions.  I suppose my experience at the hobby exposes me to the deplorable exceptions among the local population, and I keep reminding myself of the fact.  But when we have to drive through the centre of town after 23:00 we do so with doors locked and great circumspection, occasionally having to swerve to avoid scantily clad young slappers as they stagger off the sidewalk. 

Well, I'm glad to report that the aorta is well within the bounds of normal, and Jenny, the cheerful ultrasound technician (belly-jelly-dolly?) reckons that, if an aneurysm developed and burst, it wouldn't be till I was 120.  I shall tremble till the day has passed.

Back home, I fixed to see our GP's registrar to talk about aching joints and flaking hands.  She prescribed topical ibuprofen (which, so far, is about as much use as a sick knee-ache) and signed me up for a spot of physiotherapy, for which I shall have to wait.  She has also issued me with a rather luxurious oatmeal-based moisturiser, which seems already to be helping the mitts.  All of the above free at the point of delivery: thanks, Nye!  Except of course for £2 to park at the hospital for 33 minutes, which will perhaps help to pay the obscene interest we are paying to the developers who built the place.  Thanks, Gordon.

Back at Forges-l'Evêque, we were indulging in a lie-in this morning after a night of troubled sleep when someone knocked at the door.  It turned out to be the fellow who was to come and repair our fancy work surfaces next Friday.  On seeing the yellow and blue blemishes, he could see why I was unhappy when he described them as normal.  Anything but, he reckoned, and he was surprised that the slab had got out of the factory.  He wondered if the installers had damaged it and done some inept filling.  (If I'd had to do some patching of a black material, cadmium yellow and cobalt blue wouldn't have been my colours of choice...)  Wo'evah, we'll leave them to slug it out: the repairs are just about acceptable, and in any case preferable to tearing the lot out and starting again.  The repairs stand slightly proud, but we're assured that they will ride down with wear, Sir.

I had my letter from VW on Wednesday, announcing that my car is one of the dodgy ones, incorporating a software trick that makes the engine show a lower emission level in test conditions than in normal use.  Interesting to note from the letterhead that VW holds a royal warrant.  Time for VW to be stripped thereof, it seems to me.  For decades we've been buying VWs on the basis of sound engineering, solid build, decent design and good driving characteristics.  Not matched, it seems, by the honesty of their software engineers, whom top management seems to be blaming.  CEO Winterkorn has fallen on his sword, rather than face the opprobrium and huge fines that are bound to fall on VW in the coming months.  Unforunate that I was about to trade in my car.  I'm tempted to wait for a while, and see what else crawls out of the woodwork.  I can't imagine that other manufacturers aren't above similar frauds.

Oh, and prepare the fireworks: today's post brought the news of a £25 Premium Bond win.

Getting back to normal

The chippy came round on Friday to fine tune some of the kitchen fittings, and to fill a gap in the skirting board.  This last needs a lick of paint, and the work surface people have yet to come and deal with the imperfections.  Otherwise, we're pretty much sorted.  Local family and friends couldn't use the surplus dishwasher, so we've freecycled it to a local retired nurse who can no longer stand at the sink doing dishes.  She and her son collected it a little while ago.  So, with a few other bits of fettling and turfing out, we now have garages for both motors.

We had Andy's company last night for supper: Celia was still in dock for another night or two, so we weighed in with company and catering.  Roast chicken, with stuffing made from left-over home made bread, home-grown Bramley and sage, and a local egg (other bits from Fortnum's), then apple crumble with fruit from said Bramley.  We're nowhere close to The Good Life, nor aspire thereto.  But it's always nice to serve up something home or locally grown.

Meanwhile we are still without a telephone line.  I noticed on Friday that one of the extensions (and all five others, we later found) was displaying 'Check Tel Line'.  Incoming calls ring, but when we pick up, we just get a series of raspberries in ring-tone cadence.  Curiously, the data side is working normally, so we're mercifully not deprived of the internet..  A nice chap from India got shouted at on Friday when he told me to expect it to be fixed by 17h00 on Wednesday.  (I did apologise...)  I'm sure BT was quicker off the mark when I worked there.  Sickening when I think how much sleep, weight and hair I lost peddling TQM under the banner 'Meeting Customers' Requirements'.  Two wasted years, though the exposure to senior management admittedly opened doors for my remaining years with the firm.  Given, however, that  on Thursday we had no fewer than five calls purporting to be from 'Windows Technical Department' reporting 'problems' with the computer, perhaps one should be grateful for BT's lacklustre customer service.

Anyway, it's generally peaceful here for other reasons.  The washing machine having been banished to the garage, today's two batches didn't disturb the peace of the kitchen.  And the wind's from the east, so we're spared the noise of aircraft on final to Gatwick.  Martyn, meanwhile, is crashing and banging around in the loft, having rethunk his railway layout a bit.  I ought to be adding to noise levels by cutting the grass, but the old frame is hurting enough for me to yield to laziness without too bad a conscience. 

Decorators, retired

Give or take a few details, we've finished decorating the kitchen.  We went for a blue-grey for the walls, but stuck with white for the newly flat ceiling (I hate textured ceilings, so decided to get it skimmed in addition to  the plastering job).  The walls are now painted in a Valspar matt emulsion, fancifully named 'Driftwood Blues'.  (Who dreams up these names?)  I mention  the brand only because we are so impressed by its opacity and coverage.  We've got away with a single coat (plus some touching up where the roller didn't get to the bottom of the various dimples and scars in the old plaster.  We chose the colour with an eye to making the glass splashback less prominent, and that seems to have worked.  Given, however, that the colour is much more distinct than its predecessor from the white of the ceiling, cutting-in called for precision, an ever-handy damp sponge cloth and ear plugs.  Still, it's done now, marking the end of our careers as DIY decorators. 

We are largely very happy with the kitchen.  It has space for everything - the bread machine in the picture is out because it's working, once it's finished, it has a space in the boiler cupboard.  Wonder how long it'll be before we've cluttered it all up again. 

Excellent lunch with Celia and Andy today at Giacomo's in Weald.  Giacomo and Daniela used to run a good restaurant in Lamberhurst, but have now bought their own place.  It was very well patronised today, so a bit on the noisy side (but as we were among the youngest in the house, voices may have been at higher than average levels...).  Book well in advance. 

 

Chüechichäschtli...

...were in place when we got home.  The wall where the radiator had come out looked rather a battlefield, though the new space-saving vertical radiator looks far better, and we now have a small amount of functional pipework rather than the dreadful straggle of the original.  The washing machine is installed in the garage (not quite as specified, but it works, and drains without flooding the place).  The tiling, promised for Monday, then Tuesday, had not begun, so our plan to return to a finished job was predictably foiled.  On Tuesday night, tired after long travels, we felt on seeing the unfinished job rather like two small boys coming down on Christmas morning to find we hadn't got what we'd hoped for.  In the sunlight next morning, things looked slightly less grim, and at about 09h30, James the cheerful tiler arrived to make a start.  He had finished by Friday, having done a job I'd have been proud to have done myself (and I used to be quite good at tiling).  I'm not sorry, though, to be without the thump-thump-thump of his macho-workman radio.

We now have conforming electrics - we were somewhat shocked when we moved here to find an old-fashioned fusebox hidden at the top of a cupboard - surely already obsolete by 1980, when the house went up?  We now have an up-to-date and far more accessible set of circuit breakers, neatly hidden away in the side of a cupboard at a sensible level, and by using the old fusebox as a junction box the electrician has avoided a bit of extra work and cost.

There were a few detailed faults to pick up.  The most significant are a couple of blemishes in the quartz work surface.  One is a rough flake of cadmium yellow that stands proud of the surface: the other is a dimple of cobalt blue.  Well, my dears, having spent over a month's pension on the bloody thing, we expected perfection.  To be told that such imperfections were 'normal' did little for my sang-froid, so the ensuing conversation called for restraint.  I've agreed to look at a sample that has been drilled and filled with clear resin; and if satisfied with that, to have the repair done on site, reserving my position the while.  I think my work and other experience (and the example of respected colleagues) has taught me to state my position clearly, stand my ground, and shut up till my interlocutor answers. The summarising email has elicited a reasonably constructive response.  Watch this space.

The tiler finished today, and project manager Jez has been round to do a spot of filling, so we'll soon be ready to make with the paint.  Carpenter John is coming on Tuesday to do a bit of fine tuning on cupboard doors etc.  The skip goes on Monday.  Perhaps we'll be finished in a week or so.

Fine lunch at Jane's today, with Celia and Andy also invited.  Jane's 4 year old beagle Mopsa greeted us boisterously on arrival, but soon got used to us, and, bribed with a chew, retired to her bed on the terrace in the sun.  Curiously, Jane's new kitchen uses a similar finish to ours.  I hope ours allows us to produce an equally luscious lunch.

Back home, I'm about to put the new ovens to proof on a couple of loaves.  I think we'll need to get the stuff back into cupboards now that the worst of the snagging is out of the way.  The 'where the $@*#'s the x?' moments are falling thick and fast.  And will no doubt continue once stuff is in new homes.

The long road home

[Tuesday]  As I write, we await our ferry's departure from Dieppe, on our way back to England.  It looks to be less crowded than any of the crossings we've done this year, which is kind of welcome, after the eight-hour drive from Annie's.

But going back a few days, we had to cancel a dinner date and an invitation to apéros at our place, both because of my cold.  Great shame, since, respectively, we've hardly seen Sheila and Henry this year, and haven't seen Nathalie and family for a number of years.  Oh well, such are the risks of air travel.

I was feeling a bit better by Saturday, so we set off for Annie's as planned, pausing for sandwiches on the way, then a visit to the Ailes Anciennes museum (it was closed, but pretty much everything is visible through the perimeter fence.  Everything is a bit decrepit: a couple of crumbling MiG-21s, a Swiss Hawker Hunter and most of the French post-war squadron service jets.  The Caravelle at Ailes Anciennes is looking very sorry for itself, in stark contrast to the restored one at the rather fancier establishment across the road, where it shares an area with a Concorde and one of the A400 prototypes.   

Much of the time at Annie's, we were able to relax on the terrace, listening to the birds  and neighbouring farms, and watching the light changing.  We helped minimally with some of the gardening: the trees and shrubs need quite a bit of maintenance over the year.  

On Sunday we walked gently up through the woods near Aillas to meet the transhumance.  A flock of sheep is led, together with a few goats, from the High Pyrenees to their winter pastures in Aillas.  The transhumance takes a few weeks, calling at numerous towns and villages on the way for overnight pasture for sheep and shepherds alike.  By the time they get to Aillas, quite a few of the beasts are pretty lame, so one wonders whether it is the kindest form of husbandry.  

Yesterday we had a fridge leftovers lunch with Annie's friends Danielle and Pierre from the next village.  Fish cakes and wine from ours, pâté and cheese from Annie's, and salads from D&P's garden.  An ideal long, lazy, luscious lunch in excellent company.  

Today so far has been less entertaining, involving as it did eight hours' driving, including very slow progress round the rocade at Bordeaux.  I used to do this kind of journey single-handed.  I wouldn't try it now: indeed, I was very grateful to hand over to Martyn after my abbreviated post-prandial graveyard shift.  Apart from a gusting wind that reflected adversely on the fuel burn, the weather was pleasant all the way.

[Later]  The crossing was a little more lively than the last three, with quite a few white caps showing as we left Dieppe.  The ship was, as we'd hoped, far less crowded than on our last three crossings, though the catering was no better than its usual mediocre standard.  Martyn's fish and chips showed all the signs of bulk purchase from Iceland.  My chicken so-called tikka was nothing of the kind, served with parboiled rice, but quite tasty - and at least the serving was copious.

Unloading was again slow, but since the ship was less full, we were out a little over half an hour from docking, then through immigration and customs inside a further ten minutes.  All told, the journey from Annie's took close to sixteen hours.  We're rather hoping that the problems at the tunnel will soon be over.  Though it involves more driving both in the UK and in France, the time saved on the crossing, and the far slicker boarding and de-training processes make for a far less frustrating experience.

At one point, by the way, a driver in front of us on the A28 used the indicators before moving out of lane.  I almost fainted from the shock.